Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Inside Climate News laments the collapse of recently deceased Republican John McCain‘s efforts to build a bipartisan climate policy.
John McCain’s Climate Change Legacy
The senator from Arizona brought climate science into Capitol Hill hearings and cap-and-trade legislation to a vote, but then moderate Republican politics changed.
By Marianne Lavelle
AUG 26, 2018Among the many battles Sen. John McCain waged in his storied career, it is easy to overlook his fight for U.S. action on climate change.
He wrote legislation that failed. He built a bipartisan coalition that crumbled. And when Congress came closest to passing a bill that embraced his central idea—a market-based cap-and-trade system—McCain turned his back.
And yet, McCain’s nearly decade-long drive on global warming had an impact that reverberates in today’s efforts to revive the U.S. role in the climate fight. In the Senate chamber and on the campaign trail, the Arizona Republican did more than any other U.S. politician has done before or since to advance the conservative argument for climate action.
Today’s efforts to recruit GOP members into the climate movement—appeals to conservative and religious values, the framing of climate change as a national security threat, efforts to stress market-based solutions and the role business leaders can play—all owe a debt to McCain.
At the same time, McCain’s climate journey and its abrupt end serve as a cautionary tale of how far the Republican party has moved from a mainstream conservatism that is receptive to such appeals.
“What McCain did on climate is a really great reminder of where we need to get back to,” said Kevin Curtis, executive director of NRDC Action. As an environmental lobbyist on Capitol Hill in the 2000s, Curtis watched close-up as McCain crafted the first economy-wide climate legislation in the U.S. with one of his closest friends in the chamber, Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, the Democrat who would later turn Independent.
“Lieberman and McCain were really good examples of a Democrat and Republican intentionally, consciously and thoughtfully trying to work across the aisle to build a 60-vote coalition in the Senate on climate,” said Curtis. “The point of looking at McCain’s legacy, I think, is not to just look back to the ‘good old days,’ but to look at what we need to get back to.”
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I accept the view that McCain was motivated by a desire to do good, but the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Since the heady victory of President Trump it has been easy to forget that much of the world, much of the USA is still firmly in the grip of the climate rent seekers. After decades of rolling back opportunities for politicians to steal public funds, the climate crisis has opened the way for a new era of dodgy donations and kickbacks from people whom I believe are cloaking their efforts to help themselves to taxpayer’s money with noisy proclamations of their desire to save the world.
Political corruption, once entrenched, is difficult to root out. McCain, despite his best intentions, helped bring us to this point.
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“John McCain’s Climate Change Legacy”
You spelled ‘lunacy’ wrong.
Ironic. The 100 billion spent on climate change might have cured cancer.
I mourn the patriot he was and spit on the two-horned RINO he became.
CAGW is on the cusp of becoming a disconfirmed hypothesis given the huge disparity and duration of disparity between un-manipulated global temp data (UAH 6.0) vs. CMIP 5 model projections:
I hope that once CAGW is officially disconfirmed, a strong backlash against Leftist (and RINO) politicians will remove them from office for wasting $10’s of trillions on the biggest and most expensive political/scientific sc@m in human history…
Obviously this plot needs to be updated, ie., taken to 2018 (and beyond, year by year, as the future unfolds).
Should temperatures only rise modestly from now to 2020, then it would appear that all but 1 model is running drastically warm.
The 1 model that is presently tracking UAH quite well should be identified and analysed. Why does this model seem to be better than the others?
Likewise the very warmest models should be identified and analysed to see what properties they have which may explain why they are running so hot.
All models outside the 2 sigma bounds should be taken out of the model assembly, and, after analysis as to their properties, consigned to the bin.
The one reasonably successful model has been the Russian one. It never predicted exponential temperature increases. From what I’ve read it was not designed to manipulate temperature and water vapor.
None of the models should be used for anything. They were never realistically designed or validated.
It’s even worse to average models and expect to get anything useful. Averaging doesn’t apply mathematically and only gives an average of the garbage input.
His grades at the Academy might indicate that the science escaped him and so, like many, went with what his feelings told him.
I take your point that the models were never verified, but 1 way of verifying the model is to compare it with reality, ie., observation. Anything that is outside the 2 sigma bound should immediately be discarded as being disconfirmed by reality. That is not complete verification, but it would at least be a step in the right direction.
Obviously, a careful mathematical exercise is required, but it would appear, by way of mark 1 eyeball, that about 1/2 the models are outside 2 sigma bounds.
I would suggest that any model that is running above the average model assembly is clearly in error and should be disregarded. If this were to be done, then the average model assembly would be significantly reduced. Presumably, the reason that this is not being done is that if they got rid of all models outside 2 sigma bounds it would mean that there would be no scary projections and it would be clear that the models themselves are projecting an effective climate sensitivity of less than 2 degC per doubling.
Of course, 2 things are clear.
First, we know as fact that not less than 31 of the 32 models must be wrong.
Second, the average of wrong is wrong (well it is always wrong unless per chance intervenes).
McCain had more than ample opportunity to see the climate-change frenzy for what it is and, yet, chose to see it as a political issue rather than a scientific truth issue. He took the easy way out. Good guy, maybe, but he ‘wimped’!
This post and comment thread is something more appropriate for Facebook and Twitter than WUWT. While I don’t agree with John McCain about climate change, I thank him for defending our rights to freely speak in this forum. There are very few who have endured more for that right than Senator McCain and may he RIP.
It is telling that your comment which is respectful is voted down here. McCain was a man who was not afraid to compliment his adversaries. He modelled that you can disagree with the argument and still respect the person. I admire that.
Your definition of respect is not the same as mine.
And you know that because?
She’s human
Don’t know or care if the Renee comment is “respectful”. It’s been said repeatedly, and you very well know Simon, that Anth*ny can & does post anything he wants here — it’s his site. If you, Renee or anyone else doesn’t like it, they’re free to forgo the site.
You “admire” that and yet you don’t emulate it. Nice projection.
Please explain? I think I reflect very much a McCain type attitude. I have many friends whose political opinions I don’t agree with, but I respect their integrity. But like McCain I will call out a fraud as he has done with comrade Trump. The man who who was elected to protect the US and yet licks the hand of enemy.
Comrade Trump
ROFLMFAO. Trump is the antithesis of socialism/communism. Again & again & again, the projection is strong in you & your fellow neo-Stalinists…….
Well then perhaps explain his performance in Helsinki? He couldn’t have got further up Putins butt.
Trump said “would” instead of “wouldn’t” and the MSM and other radical leftists went wild claiming Trump was saying Russia did not meddle in the elections, and then when Trump corrected himself his critics refused to accept his explanation and still claimed Trump was saying the Russians did not meddle.
Then, Hannity showed about a half a dozen video clips of Trump saying the Russians DID meddle, but that hasn’t stopped the meme from continuing to be perpetrated by the radical Left. They are trying to turn this lie into the truth.
Did you see those Hannity video clips, Simon? Probably not. That’s why you are still perpetrating this misleading narrative.
Trump said the Russians meddled, long before Helsinki.
When “Trump corrected himself” it looked like he was a POW coerced into a false confession.
(I still think Trump is hostage in the WH, somewhat.)
What’s your issue with the polite exchanges with Putin? Or with Putin in general? Or politeness in general?
Bonus question: Do you have issues with implying that the US might in any way shape or form need to provide excuses or regrets for bombing Japan? cause I have issues with that idea.
Do you think Trump’s decisions help Putin? How?
Do you think the so called US intel community should get more respect than the Academies of sciences, universities, the ABA, the medical boards, Big Medicine, the medias?
Do you think that Trump is hurting the “intel community”? What do you think happens next, after all the MSM talking heads get their TOP SECRET access revoked? What about the intellectual ineffective admirals that allowed parts of the US military to get so inept and stupid?
John McCain wanted to please everyone.
He could not find access to the basics of real life.
Many said in the 70s he should have accepted the offer of release, as commander from home, he could have served his troops better.
Obviously he did not agree. He was probably honest with that.
Thank you for reminding people that he was a “believer” in CAGW.
Political corruption, once entrenched, is difficult to root out. McCain, despite his best intentions, helped us to this point.
Although nothing bad should be said about the deceased, it is precisely this naivety that is exploited by the world-betterers for the benefit of their own income.
Only recently did a green politician in Baden-Württemberg campaign to “move capital” towards climate protection. So cast out the devil with the Beelzebub. Not a word of justice or equitable distribution of resources. Veneer everywhere.
Why can nothing bad be said about the deceased? I don’t understand why dying makes your bad behavior off-limits. Does that apply to dictators and other truly evil people?
This is a saying that is generally applied here in Germany to the memory of the deceased. Of course it is not always valid. Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot did not fare so well. A certain gray area already existed in the case of Mao Tse Tung, who was also responsible for thousands of deaths. And if the story is even further back, so much the better if you call Ivan the Terrible or King Bluebeard. Centuries cover their misdeeds and their “size” (or not) remains.
Thus, Charlemagne may call himself great, although to be powerful, he had his siblings murdered.
Such persons have gained the immortality of infamy. From that standpoint, they are not really the deceased alluded to in the saying.
I think that it is because the dead cannot defend themselves. If they are to be put on trial, it is rather unfair that they cannot offer a defence.
Of course, one cannot learn from history unless one examines past historical figures of note, and if one does not learn from history, one is destined to make the same mistakes.
Personally, I think that a certain amount of pragmatism is required. It is simply good manners to allow a respectful period of silence so as not to cause further distress to those who are personally involved and grieving, and thereafter one should be at liberty to objectively examine the person and what they have and have not achieved.
I can see where new accusations would be wrong, but things the guy did and was accused of and known for while alive seem to fine to me. If the guy was able to defend himself then, I think that’s good enough. (Maybe a short period without negative comments, but really, if the guy took flak all his life, how can the relatives not know? I guess it seems more cruel to pretend the guy was a great guy if everyone knew he wasn’t.)
Yes waiting until someone powerless dies (or have Alzheimer) to raise accusations against him is abhorrent.
I don’t think any serious accusation against McCain, from bad pilot to irresponsible pilot to false hero to “songbird McCain” to disregarding the veterans to conspiring with the FBI, the GOP, CIA, NSA, UK intel agencies and DNC against Donald Trump, waited until his death to be published. So it’s legit.
(Also, McCain was not powerless.)
Senator McCain was a great patriot who tragically did the wrong thing consistently.
I admired his love of the United States and found his multiple failures on many fronts to be very disappointing.
May he rest in peace.
mmmm…Not so much:
https://www.thenation.com/article/why-has-john-mccain-blocked-info-mias/
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=mccain+blocked+vietnam+mia+search
Following the BBC’s tribute to McCain, I expect him to be nominated for a sainthood.
Let us hope not. Of course, they don’t make saints like they used to…..
That would be canonization, present Pope might do it.
He might….
too busy helping the podestaphiles.
Notice the hypocrisy and vacuousness of the concern trolls’ arguments. They have no problem criticizing this site, and Eric Worrall’s post, but nothing to say about the article itself extolling McCains so-called “Climate legacy”.
I guess with legacy writing one must not re-check the data updates against the model predictions for that would muddy the story.
“When you include the good things you ought to have done, and leave out the bad things you did do, that’s memoirs.” -Will Rogers
Legacies and tributes, too.
John McCain and good intentions, they do not seem compatible. The Climate Change movement is a religion mascaraing as science.
A pseudoreligion masquerading as pseudoscience.
Thanks for the post, Eric — agree w/your assessments. Whether McCain had good intentions, any “climate policy” is ridiculous by its very premise. Illusions of grandeur & irrational that we can “control” the climate, but it would be a huge money-grabbing/exploitation opportunity.
“Since the heady victory of President Trump it has been easy to forget that much of the world, much of the USA is still firmly in the grip of the climate rent seekers. After decades of rolling back opportunities for politicians to steal public funds, the climate crisis has opened the way for a new era of dodgy donations and kickbacks from people whom I believe are cloaking their efforts to help themselves to taxpayer’s money with noisy proclamations of their desire to save the world.
Political corruption, once entrenched, is difficult to root out. McCain, despite his best intentions, helped bring us to this point.” ~E Worrall
I deeply regret voting for him. Obviously, in retrospect, voting to keep the other guy out does not work, because you will get more progressive globalists from both parties that way.
Also at the time McCain ran — and I am not excusing myself — the destruction of economies from renewables (Spain, Italy, Australia) was not clearly demonstrated, but it is a proven fact now.
Maybe if we get really really focused we can avoid the swamp placing Smart meters on our homes to ration electricity and water. Also we need to make sure that any company we have invested in is not selling Smart meters. (Like Bain for example. )
I’m not going to speak ill of the dead, but I don’t have to honor the guy.
Sadly McCain was not a conservative Republican but more in line with the old Rockefeller wing of the Party or more like an old, now extinct, moderate Democrat. And if he had been a true patriot then once he knew his diagnosis was terminal he should have resigned from the Senate. While I honor and respect his military service I was never fond of his political actions in Washington, D.C. which often help advance the “Progressive agenda” in the Senate.
Yet another type of ‘Climate Change’….
US Socialist Democrats 2008: McCain mentally unfit to be president.
US Socialist Democrats 2012: McCain a racist and a woman hater.
US Socialist Democrats 2018: McCain a bipartisan American hero.
Have you plotted the love of McCain over time?